Review #153: Shinobi

 The swell guys at Google actually unlisted my blog for a little while....

 Shinobi is one of Sega's longest running series, I believe, they usually revolve around different protagonists and settings, but they all share one thing in common: You play as one badass Ninja.

 The story while not particularly deep, serves its purpose well, and I really liked the lore. You play as Hotsuma, the leader of the Oboro clan, a role he achieved by beheading his brother in battle. As soon as the game starts, the entirety of the Oboro clan is killed offscreen, and their corpses are being used to hunt Hotsuma. Later down the road, Akujiki, Hotsuma's blade, awakens and now craves the blood of his enemies... if not, it will consume Hotsuma himself. While most enemies are rather simple, and bosses aren't much to talk about, there are a few outstanding designs, like Hotsuma who is one of my favorite Ninjas ever created, or the Evil Ninja the evil guy's head honcho employs.

 Gameplay is very action oriented, with a couple of platforming sections. Hotsuma has a rather varied assortment of moves at his disposal. Square provides the Katana slashes, targeting an enemy and holding back while attacking produces a kick that break guards, and he also has Kunais, that deal negligible damage, but stuns the enemies. Hotsuma can also double jump, and by jumping towards walls he can cling onto most of them, and move alongside it, attacking if needed. There's also a Shadow dash that can be used to dodge or quickly move behind an enemy. Sometimes you'll run into scrolls that allow Hotsuma to cast one of three spells, the offensive Ka'en fire spell, Kamaitachi that lets Hotsuma fire lightning slashes and Raijin that gives him invincibility for a few seconds. Lastly, holding R1 allows Hotsuma to target an enemy, but slows him down to a walk, I found that R1 was useful to track where the next enemy was in order to better approach him. Controls are spot-on, and moving around while Ninjaing around feels really good.

 The game's main mechanic revolves around the Akujiki, as previously stated, this sword craves for blood, even if it's Hotsuma's, basically, go on for too long without killing enemies, and the sword will begin sapping Hotsuma's health. Killing enemies restores a moderate amount of the gauge, what you really want to do is "Tate" kills. After killing an enemy, he will remain dead, but standing, for a little while, and every time you kill another enemy, so will they, the more enemies you leave in this stage, the stronger Akujiki becomes, until they fall dead. Killing every enemy in the vicinity before any one of them falls will produce a Tate, the camera will freeze at an angle, while Hotsuma strikes a pose and the enemies all fall together, restoring a huge amount of the Akujiki gauge.

 The game is moderately challenging on its normal setting. I read that the game was supposed to be "incredibly hard", but at least on the normal setting, it's pretty manageable. The game has 10 stages, and I didn't have to retry any one more than four times, same goes for the "incredibly hard" last boss, whom I defeated on my third try. This isn't me boasting, I don't boast over videogames, this is me saying that, while not easy, it isn't as hard as everyone makes it out to be. One thing to keep in mind though, is that levels don't have checkpoints, die and it's all over. And botomless pits? Sorry, back to the start of the level. Which wouldn't be so bad, but there's a fair amount of platforming required, and the platforming isn't up to snuff. The camera, while fine while fighting, doesn't aid you in aiming your jumps, and getting used to how Hotsuma jumps takes a bit of time. That said, level 8, the one filled with botomless pits over which you must jump around as you break seals and enemies, was one of my favorites.

 The game is rather short, while Stages are divided in two sub stages(Say, 1-A and 1-B), they are fairly short, and the latter "B" levels are simply bosses without preceding stages. Levels have hidden coins for you to find, and find 30 and 40 of them will unlock two different playable characters with their own strengths and weaknesses, which is pretty cool and a great incentive to play the game again on the higher difficulties. While the game left me wanting more, I found the length, for the type of game, just fine, the issue was that I liked the game so much, I wanted it to last even longer!

 Presentation is Shinobi's weakest asset. Enemies are very simple and not much to look at, and the stages look rather bland. I loved going through the stages, but they felt a bit generic, with very few remarkable landmarks. There's the level in the city, and the one underground, and the one with lava, and so on, not much to talk about. Textures are also fairly muddy. On the flip side, Hotsuma looks really cool, and the scarf makes him look even cooler. Music was fairly good, I loved most tracks, but the voice acting was mediocre, even the Japanese one.

 I'm gonna say it straight, I loved Shinobi. My biggest complaint is the platforming, which is merely adequate and could've been handled a bit better. The second one being that I wanted even more Shinobi. Everything else about the game, I enjoyed, easily on my favorite PS2 games ever created. And Hotsume is hands down the most badass Ninja ever created, no wonder Hibana and Jiro borrowed so much from his design(And mixed it with Joe's colors).
 9.0 out of 10.